VentureLoop News

We made an interesting observation late Wednesday night.  As our monthly metrics reports began streaming to our venture capital clients, we noticed that for the first time in several months more than half of our VC firm’s portfolio companies added more jobs than they removed for the month.  As venture-backed startups have cut back in these tough economic times, they have been pulling job openings from their career sites.  While new jobs are still added each month, the number of jobs eliminated has been significantly higher.  So while a newly funded startup might list 5 new job openings, 3 other venture-backed firms might eliminate 10 previously posted jobs.  But not in July.  Is this s sign of hope in the job market?

Historically startups and early stage companies tend to begin hiring sooner than the bigger public companies as economic times improve.  They have more flexibility and can commit to headcount without the market pressures that publicly traded companies feel.  Could this be a sign of better things to come?  We don’t know, but it was at least a refreshing observation.  We’ll keep you posted on any other positive signs and check in next month to determine if this was an anomoly or the beginning of a trend.

Aloqa, a mobile search company that sends you information about events, friends and other data based on your location, launched its first product today at MobileBeat: an app for Android-based devices.

The company also announced $1.5 million in first-round funding from Wellington Partners and angel investors, and the appointment of a new CEO, Sanjeev Agrawal, an ex-head of product marketing from Google and more recently vice president of products at TellMe Networks (now part of Microsoft).

Aloqa Jobs

Along with the rest of our management team and employees, I am pleased to announce that SB Nation has secured a new round of financing. The lead investor in this round is Comcast Interactive Capital (CIC), the venture investment arm of Comcast.  CIC is joined by several of our existing investors, including the lead from our first round Accel Partners, who are upping their investment in the company.

San Francisco, California, June 2, 2009 – Widgetbox, the web’s largest widget community, announced that VentureLoop, the worldwide leader in hosted career sites for venture capital firms, will utilize Widgetbox to offer Blidgets and Facebook applications to their venture capital clients.

“Widgetbox has a great technology that will allow VentureLoop to create a unique offering for our venture capital clients to display their portfolio companies’ job postings on blogs and through Facebook,” said Jeremy McCarthy, VentureLoop’s CEO.  “The new Blidget Pro will even allow customization to match the look and feel our venture capital clients want in order to show consistent branding.  This really helps us add value to our venture firms and their portfolio companies by maximizing exposure to their job listings through the enormous Widgetbox community of users.  With over 9 billion widgets served and 90 million unique monthly viewers, it was clear to us that a partnership with Widgetbox would add significant value to our venture capital community of clients.”

Hummer Winblad, a premier San Francisco venture capital firm, has begun making the widget available for blogs and as a Facebook application.  “This is an innovative way for us to help promote job opportunities at our portfolio companies,” said Ann Winblad, co-founder and Managing Director of Hummer Winblad.  “The VentureLoop and Widgetbox solution allows us to create awareness of job openings on blogs and social media destinations where top candidates spend time.”

“We’re thrilled to work with VentureLoop and integrate our tools into their growing community,” said Will Price, CEO of Widgetbox.  “Partnering with the leader in the venture capital career space is a great opportunity to demonstrate how Widgetbox can  display job listings across the web and distribute their content on blogs, Facebook and other popular sites.”

Bloggers and fans of the venture community can download individual venture firm job widgets on the VentureLoop website here:

http://www.ventureloop.com/ventureloop/ventureloopwidgetbox.php

Facebook applications for individual venture capital firms will be available through the Facebook website.

About Widgetbox
With more than 157,000 active widgets and 90 million unique monthly viewers, Widgetbox is home to the web’s largest widget community.  Since 2006, Widgetbox has been the leading self-service web widget platform, enabling developers, publishers and marketers to efficiently create viral widgets compatible across the web. Widgetbox is particularly well-suited for feed-based content.  The Blidget and Blidget Pro tools allow publishers and marketers to convert RSS feeds (from blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Vimeo and others) into customized, branded widgets – without any development or engineering resources. For more information, please visit http://www.widgetbox.com.

About VentureLoop

VentureLoop is the leading website dedicated to job postings for emerging venture-backed companies and startup companies with over 100,000 unique monthly visitors. VentureLoop creates direct relationships with the world’s top venture capital firms to connect their portfolio companies with quality candidates. Candidates can search the VentureLoop website for thousands of jobs at startups and growth companies backed by top-tier venture capital firms. VentureLoop’s VentureCareers product is a hosted career page for venture capital firms, allowing portfolio companies to advertise job openings directly onto their venture capital firm’s public website. VentureLoop also publishes the weekly VentureLoop Emerging Growth Newsletter, which communicates valuable information about emerging growth company news, funding, and career advice. Find out more at www.ventureloop.com.

About Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners was created in 1989 as the first venture capital firm focused exclusively on software. As the software industry grew from PC software to enterprise computing to Internet applications, Hummer Winblad has been at the forefront – funding the entrepreneurs and the ideas that helped define these markets. The firm’s goal is to provide the capital, experience and vision that will enable its companies to become leaders in this new software economy. For more information on Hummer Winblad, visit www.humwin.com.

VentureLoop Facebook Application

San Francisco, California, March 18, 2008 – VentureLoop, the worldwide leader in hosted career sites for venture capital firms, announced the launch of two new career site widgets. The free version of these widgets will enable venture capital firms and their portfolio companies to host a career page on their public websites simply by placing a small piece of code provided by VentureLoop. With more than 30 venture capital firms already using VentureLoop’s premium career site product, the new release will give flexibility for more venture capital firms to display the job openings of their portfolio companies while also enabling their portfolio companies to easily display jobs on their own website. All jobs posted by the portfolio companies automatically synchronize with the venture firm’s career page.

“The advances in technology have enabled us to offer a free version of our premium product,” said Jeremy McCarthy, VentureLoop’s CEO. “Many venture capital firms prefer the premium version of our career website, but this new widget will enable every venture capital firm to add a career page to their website, regardless of their budget. The free portfolio company career page widget provides a remarkably simple way for companies to have their own career site without buying an expensive applicant tracking system or waiting for IT to update their postings. It also automatically synchronizes with each of their venture investors. We believe the venture community will continue creating thousands of jobs each year, and we will be there to support their efforts.”

The portfolio company widget launched in beta in late 2008, and both free widgets will be available for download off the VentureLoop website by validated venture firms and portfolio companies by the end of March. Some of the features include basic customization of styles for website presentation, customized industry names to match venture firm websites, a stored resume database for all job applications, and a monthly email of metrics showing the traffic and resume activity of the website. VentureLoop’s premium version allows for more customization, RSS feeds for jobs, integration of job listings on portfolio company pages of a venture firm’s website, and regular refreshing of jobs by VentureLoop account managers for all portfolio companies.

Interested venture firms and companies can email sales@ventureloop.com to request more information about the free widget or premium career site product. You can see more information at the following link:

http://www.ventureloop.com/ventureloop/jobwidget.php

About VentureLoop

VentureLoop is the leading website dedicated to job postings for emerging venture-backed companies and startup companies. VentureLoop creates direct relationships with the world’s top venture capital firms to connect their portfolio companies with quality candidates. Candidates can search the VentureLoop website for thousands of jobs at startups and growth companies backed by top-tier venture capital firms. VentureLoop’s VentureCareers product is a hosted career page for venture capital firms, allowing portfolio companies to advertise job openings directly onto their venture capital firm’s public website. VentureLoop also publishes the weekly VentureLoop Emerging Growth Newsletter, which communicates valuable information about emerging growth company news, funding, and career advice. Find out more at www.ventureloop.com.

First Round Capital launched VentureCareers. First Round has a great portfolio of high quality Web 2.0 companies. Check out their postings at http://jobs.firstround.com.

San Francisco, CA, November 11, 2008 – Granite Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on the technology sector, today announced that it has added a web-based career resource, VentureCareers, to assist portfolio companies in promoting unique career opportunities. VentureCareers is hosted by VentureLoop, the worldwide leader in jobs exclusively for the venture-backed community.

“We consistently focus on partnering with our portfolio companies to find and develop the kind of talent that builds winning teams,” said Standish O’Grady, managing director at Granite Ventures. “We are employing the VentureCareers system as another resource for helping our portfolio companies identify the best and brightest candidates for their open positions.”

“Granite Ventures has built a solid reputation for identifying companies well positioned to succeed, and we are pleased to add them to our client roster,” said Jeremy McCarthy, CEO of VentureLoop. “The Granite portfolio of companies represents a nice cross section of early-stage technology companies in the software, services and communications sectors – interesting areas that create unique job opportunities.”

About Granite Ventures, LLC

Granite Ventures has been helping early-stage technology companies build solid foundations for success since 1992. Granite has managed over $1 billion in venture capital and has invested in more than 100 private companies. They partner with promising and successful entrepreneurs to create businesses that have a competitive edge, and help those businesses achieve category leadership. More information can be found at www.granitevc.com.

About VentureLoop

VentureLoop is the leading website dedicated to job postings for emerging venture-backed companies and startup companies. VentureLoop creates direct relationships with the world’s top venture capital firms to connect their portfolio companies with quality candidates. Candidates can search the VentureLoop website for thousands of jobs at startups and growth companies backed by top-tier venture capital firms. VentureLoop’s VentureCareers product is a hosted career page for venture capital firms, allowing portfolio companies to advertise job openings directly onto their venture capital firm’s public website. VentureLoop also publishes the weekly VentureLoop Emerging Growth Newsletter, which communicates valuable information about emerging growth company news, funding, and career advice. Find out more at www.ventureloop.com.

CONTACT:

For VentureLoop:

David Libby

dlibby@twopinspr.com

For Granite Ventures:

Theresa Maloney

theresa@cogentacom.com

MuleSource
Founded: 2006
Location: San Francisco, CA
Current Employees: 50 (30 in SF)
Funding: $16.5M
VCs: Hummer Winblad, Morgenthaler, Lightspeed

Overview
MuleSource is the leading provider of open source service oriented architecture
(SOA)
infrastructure software. Founded by the creators of the Mule project, the
world’s most
reliable and widely used open source enterprise service bus (ESB) and
integration
platform, MuleSource delivers enterprise-class software, support, and services
to the
thousands of organizations that have downloaded the open source project
worldwide.

Competition
They are the leading opensource player.  Main competition is from
proprietary incumbent players and large software companies.

Users
Developers and architects in the IT group of a company.  Variety of
industries.  Don’t just focus on Fortune 500’s of the world.
Effectively serve the smaller and mid-market companies. 

Sales
Business model comes from subscriptions that include enterprise class version
of the software and additional tooling and support.  Consulting services
on top of that.  Sales team with inside/outside model.  Got a start
in financial services, but very diverse.  Over 80% of deployments are
considered mission critical.

Working environment
Startup culture.  Passionate group of employees.  Believe in the
opensource model. Not internally competitive.  International feel with
people contributing from all over the world.  Offices in 9 countries.

Hot Job
All sales positions.  Get
over 1,000 leads each month.  Infrastructure software experience
helpful.  Believe they will be the winner in the SOA space.